


between the shadow and the soul

by sarsaparillia



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, City Elf Culture and Customs, Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, F/M, Families of Choice, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), grumpy tevene murder elf catches feelings for tiny dalish bloodwitch: the fanfiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:36:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27598331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarsaparillia/pseuds/sarsaparillia
Summary: A baby. He brings her ababy.Oh, Creators.
Relationships: Fenris/Merrill (Dragon Age)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 102





	1. certain dark things

**Author's Note:**

> **dedication** : to Emily and Sonya, just like every other time  
>  **notes** : i've been reading a lot of Pablo Neruda. don't look at me like that.  
>  **notes2** : _broken parable_ — bear's den.

—

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 _Bang-bang-bang_!

Merrill startles from a strange dream coloured melancholy green, Fade-shimmery and sick. For an endless moment, the dreamdark glimmer plays across her skin— _throat, knees, knobs of knuckles, a body between your thighs hot and hungry, oh, please, please,_ _ **please**_ —melding into the rain outside, and she has no idea where she is.

 _Bang-bang-bang-_ _ **bang**_!

She stumbles out of bed, tangled in the blankets, trailing the dream behind her. Merrill rubs at her eyes; Creators, it's still the middle of the night! Who would—?

Merrill wrenches the door open just before the banging starts again.

She finds Fenris, mouth open as though he's about to wake the entire alienage yelling for her and entirely dripping wet, standing outside. Lightning cracks across the sky, flooding the alienage square with purple-white light. Fenris is haggard in the face, deep dark crags beneath his eyes, folded up beneath a travelling cloak that's certainly seen better days.

They blink at one another.

(Merrill didn't think she was going to see him again. There's no reason for Fenris to be here; Hawke is gone. It feels like it started raining the day after she left, and it hasn't stopped, since. It feels like it's rained without end for the last six months, and Merrill is hollow inside her soul.)

There are a hundred thousand things that Merrill could say.

She says none of them, instead.

She waits, instead. Blinks at him again. The night air bites at her cheeks and her bare knees beneath the ragged him of her sleep shift, cool and wet, and she's awake now, very awake. Her skin prickles.

Fenris's jaw twitches. He inhales sharply, closes his mouth. Opens it again. "Witch," he says, very quietly, "May I—may I come in? Please?"

Merrill doesn't think she's ever heard Fenris say _please_.

Not to her, anyway.

For a horrible held breath, neither of them moves.

And then Merrill ducks out of the way, and lets him inside.

—

_Hot inside._

_Fenris slouches further into the hood of his cloak, the darkness beneath the slave auctions at the edge of Asariel's wharf district pressing close. It drags its filmy fingers through his hair, chokes around his throat like a collar. He keeps his hands tucked inside the cloak for fear of the lyrium glow giving him away; he is a darker smudge in a world of shadows, hardly alive._

_He can barely breathe over the stench of unwashed bodies and the clinging misery._

_But it won't be long, now._

_The people trapped here will be long gone when the place burns. And it_ will _burn, and the wharfs will burn, and the sticky-glue tack of the blazebalm will scent his hands for days. The last thing he needed was the purchase orders, and he has them, now. And so this place will burn._

_Fenris will see that does._

_He slides between bodies, breaking shackles as he goes. It is always the same:_ Quiet _, he murmurs in an ear, and then lyrium flare, and then a held, overwhelmed breath. They set the shackles down together, careful not to make a sound, and then the body leaves._

_The space below the slave docks empty slowly._

_Fenris remembers what it felt like, to be so close to freedom, and still unable to grab hold. He does not begrudge them their time._

" _Quiet," Fenris says, more wind than sound. "I am going to let you free."_

_The body doesn't move, freezes in place._

" _Not me," a girl's voice says. "Him. My brother—he's more important."_

_When Fenris moves enough to see her face, he thinks he might be ill. The girl is thin to emaciation in the half-light. The accent sticks in Fenris' craw; he's only heard its ilk from one person, before, and thinking of the witch shreds something tight and throbbing at the top of his throat. It will never be easy. She—the witch—is—_

" _Please," the girl says. Her eyes are huge in her skull. "Please, he's just a baby."_

— _not here. Fenris forces himself to focus. The girl offers the bundle again. Her arms shake. Her hands shake, too. She doesn't have long. It's there in her face, the death. Close enough to touch, breathing hot down her neck._

_He knows the feeling._

_Fenris, before he entirely knows what he's doing, takes it from her._

—

Oh, Creators, Merrill doesn't know why she let him in.

(She doesn't know a lot of things, really.)

The air between them is strange and— _full_ , like a breath held too long. Merrill busies herself with the hearth; the crackle of fire blooms beneath her hands small and mundane. Magic would be too fast, and Merrill needs a moment to collect herself.

It's not every day that Fenris shows up at her door in the middle of the night, sopping wet or not!

And Merrill isn't very good at these things. Not people in general, but especially not Fenris.

But the flame catches, eventually, and the golden wash of crimson-orange heat paints her home in flickering shadows. They dance along the walls, never staying still, there and then gone.

 _Be brave, Merrill_ , she tells herself with a slow breath.

Creators, it feels like there's dried blood crusted beneath her nails, even though she knows there's not. Fenris always makes her insides quake, even though she knows that he doesn't mean to. If he meant to, she probably wouldn't be breathing.

That would be disappointing.

She has to turn 'round to face him, though.

He's still dripping soundlessly on the floor, and still wearing that cloak. The silly man, he's not even wearing boots. Even _Merrill_ knows that not wearing boots in the rain is liable to get someone sick!

"Fenris? D'you want a towel?"

"I am fine," he says.

"Er, are you sure, because you're rather wet—"

"It is not a concern, witch," Fenris says.

She's about to open her mouth to argue, when it occurs to her that there's something wrong with his expression. Merrill hasn't ever seen reverence in Fenris' face before. She didn't think she'd know it if she saw it, but there's no other word for the quiet, awe-stricken look on his face as he so carefully unwraps his cloak from his shoulders and allows it to drop in a crumpled heap on the floor.

All of the air disappears from the room.

Fenris is holding a baby.

The babe is brown-skinned and dark-haired, and sleeping more soundly than Merrill has ever seen a babe sleep in her life. So _small,_ too, teeny-tiny hands and toes and long pointed ears that need to be grown into, the way Merrill had had to grow into her own ears, the way that _everyone_ she'd grown up with had had to grow into their own ears, all gangly and silly and not knowing where the limbs go—

"Oh," Merrill breathes.

Well, she's _very_ awake, now!

Fenris hasn't moved. The rain is the only sound, dripping plink- _plink_ into the bucket in the corner where the shoddy roof patch leaks anyway, drumming against the shutters, pattering against the stone outside. Merrill suspects he's not quite sure _what_ to do. Not that she blames him!

She doesn't really know what to do, either. She twines her fingers in knots behind her back, and waits.

"I am—" Fenris starts, stops, clenches his jaw. "I do not mean to intrude, witch."

"I think we're well past that, Fenris," Merrill says, lightly, trying not to smile at him. It probably won't help if she smiles, even though she wants to! It's a very funny sight, isn't it, Fenris all hunched up around a baby as though he's never held one before.

(It occurs to her belatedly that he might not have. It sobers her, some.)

"Y'might as well come sit," Merrill says. The kettle whistles over the fire. "I didn't know you were coming home. Was it a very long journey?"

"It was not," he says.

"Oh, that's not so bad then, is it," she nods, more to herself than him. "D'you want some tea? Isabela gave it t'me before she and Hawke left, I'm quite fond of it—"

"Witch," Fenris cuts her off, at last. "I have a baby."

"Yes, Fenris, I can see that, I do have eyes," Merrill says. "Y'didn't answer the question. Tea?"

"I—yes."

Merrill pours the tea, and it's very quiet between them for a long moment. Her tongue is thick in her mouth; she really was never very good at this, never very good at people, and _especially_ never very good at Fenris. They always butted heads, even when she didn't mean for them to!

And she wants to say it's very strange that he's sitting here, now, with the rain outside and the babe still in his arms, dripping water into a puddle on the floor.

"I don't have a crib," Merrill says. "But we can probably put him down on my bed, if y'want t'stay. It'll be better. He'll be dry, at least?"

Fenris nods, jerky as anything, but he doesn't move until Merrill tips her head towards her bedroom. He just stands there and drips forlornly, instead.

"Over there, Fenris," Merrill takes pity on him. "I s'pose you wouldn't know, would you."

"I would not," Fenris agrees. "I have not been in your bedroom before, witch."

"It would be very odd if you had done?"

Fenris makes a tiny noise that might be choked-off amusement. He used to make that sound all the time, when Hawke would say something that he thought was funny but didn't want anyone to _know_ he thought it funny. Merrill ducks her head into her shoulders to hide away her own little smile. He's very honest, Fenris, and always when he doesn't mean to be.

Merrill's bedroom is clean. Or—well, there are no cobwebs, anyway, and she hasn't enough clothes to leave them lying about. The nest of blankets that she curls into after the sun goes down is smoothed over, for once. A breath she didn't know she was holding slides out of her chest.

Fenris moves around her on silent feet. The babe doesn't wake even when he's laid down on her sheets; doesn't even yawn. She hasn't ever seen Fenris so gentle in her life. He's so slow, and so careful, the bitterness she's so used to from him nowhere to be found.

Merrill hovers in the doorway feeling like someone's knifed her between the ribs, and she doesn't know _why_.

Creators, she shouldn't be watching this. It's so private.

Merrill slips away before Fenris looks up. She can give him that; a moment to himself like the shard of a broken mirror.

(She is suddenly, fervently glad that Aveline had convinced her to throw the mirror-frame away. The thought of it around such a little'un—oh, Creators, no. No, no, _no_.)

The fire looks like it could use another log. Merrill busies herself with it again, and then settles down on a chair close enough that the wash of light and heat blocks out whatever anxiety the waiting might give her.

And she doesn't have to wait long.

Fenris pulls the cloth that Merrill uses for a door closed behind him. It won't cut the sound of voices hardly at all; muffled, maybe a little, but not enough. He drops into the chair on the other side of the fire, and closes his eyes for a second longer than a standard blink.

They'll just have to be quiet, then.

Merrill gives him a minute. She's never been much good at waiting for other people to say things—she tends to blurt words out, off her tongue and out into the air before she really knows what she's said—but she bites down on her lip hard enough to hurt.

"I would not be averse to a towel now, witch, if the offer remains," Fenris says, finally.

"Oh!" Merrill says. She's up like a shot, halfway to the cubboard before she realizes that she's between guilty and frantically glad that he'd said something before she had done. "I'm so sorry, I should have—"

"Stop worrying so much," he says. "You did not know."

Merrill clutches the towel to her chest. Patched and ratty, but clean. It's better than most other things she owns; it's still mostly in one piece!

"Here," she says, and has the decency to look away as he goes about the damp business of getting dry. She thinks her ears are burning. She's not entirely sure.

It's a long time later that a sigh leaves him, and Merrill allows herself to look up. He's looking a bit fluffy, but she's not going to tell him that. She'd rather _not_ have her head bitten off, even if she's only just teasing. Merrill manages a smile, instead. "Oh, that's much better, isn't it?"

"I—" Fenris starts, and then ruthlessly chokes whatever else he was about to say off. His shoulders go a little stiff. "Thank you, Merrill."

"I think that's what friends are s'posed t'do, Fenris," Merrill says, and doesn't point out that they certainly are _not_ friends, and that he'd just said her _name_ , and that there is a baby sleeping in her bed who shouldn't be there at all!

He doesn't point it out, either, which is more of a relief than she'd thought it would be.

"I'm surprised he didn't wake up," Merrill says. She looks at her hands. Oh, Mythal. Speaking to fill silence, just like always. "The rain must have been cold. He sleeps through everything, doesn't he?"

Fenris inclines his head a fraction of an inch. "I do not understand it."

"You barely sleep at all," Merrill points out.

As much as Fenris clearly wants to argue with this, he can't. She well knows it, too; Hawke used to get on him for the not-sleeping, and Isabela did, and Varric still does when he remembers that he should. Fenris' jaw twitches, and Merrill can only smile largely at him.

"I feel I am being insulted," Fenris says, but it's not as flat as it could be. He crooks an eyebrow at her.

"Is it an insult if it's true?"

"Yes, witch."

"Oh," she says. "Well then, yes, I s'pose you are, a little. Where did you find him?"

She doesn't expect the sudden, violent stiffening to his limbs. Fenris turns almost painfully still, still as stone, the colour leaching out of his face until he's ashen beneath the dark pallor of his skin.

"He was—" he says, halts and swallows. "Tevinter is no place for a child. He was entrusted to me."

This, Merrill thinks, was probably a very difficult thing for Fenris to come to terms with. No place for an elvhen child, certainly, and she doesn't have to hear it to know that he means it. _Entrusting_ is very much like _given_ , isn't it, and he'd have a hard time with being _given_ someone, even if that someone is only a baby. He's so small! No, Fenris wouldn't like that at all.

Merrill wants to reach out and touch his shoulder, but she thinks it's likely better that she doesn't. He won't appreciate it, even if he did bring the baby to her in the first place.

But a baby is one thing.

Comfort is another.

"Why me, then?" Merrill asks. She won't argue about Tevinter. He knows that story much better than she does, after all.

Fenris is more out of sorts about this question than Merrill had expected him to be. He shifts into a crow's shrug, uncomfortable in the movement, all shadows and shards. But he doesn't flinch from the asking. "I was told—Dalish, from the south."

Merrill's eyes flash. "Did they say which clan?"

"No."

"Oh," says Merrill, and knows in her heart that that wee'un's clan is long dead. She looks at her hands, milk-white knuckles and knobs. "We might be able t'find them at an Arlathvhen, but…"

"I do not think they are alive to find, witch," Fenris says, too quiet.

"I didn't think they would be," Merrill tells him, very softly. A brittle little smile quirks itself across her mouth without her express permission. "No one would leave a babe like that, not if they didn't have to."

Fenris looks at her through the part in his fringe. He has very nice eyes, Merrill thinks, idly. Brilliant and green and clear, even in the gloom. Like sunlight through full-grown leaves in the deepest depths of the forest, where no one living ever walks.

They look at each other for a very long time. The silence grows like a weed.

There's only the rain and the crackle of the fire between them.

"I s'pose y'ought t'stay, then," Merrill says. "You shouldn't have t'do it all alone."

He's still looking at her, searching her face, trying to peel away her vallaslin from her skin and find the bones underneath. It squirms in Merrill's stomach, though she doesn't know why. It feels so much like a flaying, but nothing like a flaying at all.

Creators, she's glad for the dying of the fire. It hides things better than she can, herself.

If this is a dream, it's the strangest dream that Merrill's ever had. Times slips away like sand, and she doesn't know what to do with her hands. Knobs and knuckles and knees, a body between her thighs.

Again, again, again.

"Yes," Fenris says, after what feels like a long time. He stares at her without any emotion at all. "I suppose I must."

—

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.

 _tbc_.


	2. until the night collapses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **notes** : listen. sometimes a bitch just wants to write fenris experiencing emotions, okay  
>  **notes2** : _make your way_ — EMBRZ.

—

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Fenris wakes with the worst crick in his neck that he's ever had the misfortune to live through.

It still rains, a faint pale grey sound muffled from outside. Disorientation as he shakes himself awake. Fenris blinks what little rest he's had from the eaves of his eyes, and finds himself staring blearily at the witch. She's sleep-mussed and slow-moving, and— _smiling_ at the child.

"You're very pretty, aren't you," she tells the child, very seriously. "Everyone is going t'be so jealous when you grow up!"

"Envious, witch," Fenris says. His voice sounds like he's gargled sand, scratchy and rough. Everything hurts. "The correct word is envious."

"Envious, then," she agrees, easily. The witch dangles her fingers in front of the child's face, laughs quietly when he catches her fingers and attempts to stuff them in his mouth, chews roundly on them when she allows this. She is delighted. "Oh, the wee thing is growing teeth!"

"Teething," says Fenris, and closes his eyes.

"You never told me his name?" the witch says. She still does not bother to look at Fenris as she says it, far too busy babbling at the child. He understands the urge, as it has consumed him for days. Odd, then, when he is so unacquainted with care.

"You will not like it, witch," Fenris sighs, after a moment. He cracks one eye open to glance her over.

"It doesn't really matter what it is, y'know—"

"He does not have one."

The witch pauses, at that. She raises her head, stares Fenris straight in the face. "What've you been calling him, then?"

_Puer_ , which means only _child_. He does not tell her this. He does not need the witch to know the inside confines of his mind; he would prefer that she did not. Fenris is aware that he is intruding, but there was no one else—the thought of _Hawke_ near a baby near overcame him with hysterics, and he will not subject himself to this torture a second time—and the witch is…

She is curled in her bed around the child as though she has done it every day of her life.

(At the time, it made sense to bring the child to the witch. Fenris will also not tell her _this_ , either.)

"Nothing," Fenris says. "It did not seem… fair."

"Oh," says the witch. Her voice falls, soft as eiderdown. Fenris expects pity in her face, but finds none when he looks for it. It is as though she simply—understands. Fenris is not so very good at names. He is even worse at Dalish names. It would not have been right. "We should pick something, then, don't y'think? It's strange t'keep calling him _baby_."

Fenris crooks an eyebrow at her. It is a struggle not to give into the beginnings of the headache between his ears. "What would you name him?"

"Oh, I hadn't thought that far," the witch says, raising her face to blink owlishly. "I've never had t'name anyone before."

He huffs, biting down on a tiny flare of amusement. It hurts his head.

"Go on, witch," Fenris says.

The witch thinks for a drawn-out moment, chewing on her thumbnail. Fenris watches the way she traces over the child's nose, tapping right on the tip and giggling at him when he burbles. Something horrible twists in Fenris' chest.

"Would you mind if it were elvhen? Or ancient?"

" _Your_ name is neither ancient _nor_ elven," Fenris feels compelled to point out.

"No, not really, but I was named after someone," she says. "We could call him Hawke?"

"She would never let anyone live that down," says Fenris, very flatly. "No, witch."

"Feathers, then?"

"He is not a griffon."

The witch smiles out of the corner of her mouth. He gets the sense that she is _laughing_ at him. Infuriating. "Oh, see, y'do listen t'me, sometimes!"

Fenris restrains himself from glaring at her. It is far too early to be arguing. "If you are going to be difficult—"

"Aren't I always, a little bit?"

" _Witch_."

"Oh, alright, if you're going t'be like _that_ ," the witch shakes her head. She tucks a wild lock of hair away behind her ear. It's longer than Fenris has ever seen it, thick and ink-dark, and it slides over her shoulders like clouds of ash. The thin lines of blood-writing drawn into her skin is blurred through the translucence of her sleep-shift. He doesn't stare. "Names are important, y'know."

"I am aware."

"There's—I—" starts the witch, and then she falls silent. Curls a little closer around the child.

"What," says Fenris.

Before the witch can answer him, the babe takes her attention away. "Oh! You poor thing, y'must be hungry!"

Fenris is surprised that the child is not yet screaming bloody murder. He is not usually this easy, or this calm; it had taken several days before Fenris had managed the knack of hushing him quiet while he found a satisfactory meal.

But the witch is, Fenris supposes, magic.

She stretches into standing, scooping the babe up in her arms and making for the kitchen. All of his bones creak as Fenris rises from the chair he slept in to follow the trail of witch-cooing and baby-laughter behind them. The ache from the cold will not leave his fingers until the sun is well and full in the sky.

But it is good to be in Kirkwall, again.

It is good to be away from Tevinter.

"Fenris, d'you want tea?" the witch cranes her neck around to look over her shoulder. She stands in the doorway, the top of the child's dark brown head and his dark brown eyes peeped up by her chin; they are both so sleep-soft and warm, dripping with foreign comfort that is so alien to Fenris' experience that he near recoils from it.

"I would not be averse," Fenris says, lowly, biting down on the sudden acidity at the back of his throat.

It is not that Fenris particularly _enjoys_ tea, but it is hot and will force the cold from his limbs a smidge faster than it would otherwise leave. The witch is not a horrible cook; he has consumed worse meals than what she manages to scrounge together, when he is left to his own devices.

The child will eat better with the two of them working at it, for certain.

Fenris is not entirely sure why this slows his pulse, only that it does.

And so he follows her into the kitchen, pale winter light in through the windows. The wind rattles at the shutters, and the alienage outside filters in so _loud_ already.

He does not know how she can stand it.

The witch's abode is _hers_. There is discomfort in the impulse to offer his help; Fenris does not know how she arranges her life, because he is outside of it. There are little bundles of dried greens hanging by the washbasin, spiky purple thistle-flower petals scattered haphazard near her books. There is a cracked porcelain water pitcher, a round of dry sausage and the odds and ends of a loaf of bread covered by a moth-eaten cloth.

She has built herself a life.

And he is intruding.

This knowledge that it is not without reason does not make him more content for it.

"Witch," Fenris says, finally. His head is throbbing, bright and hot. "Tea. Please."

The witch hasn't been paying him any attention, busy babbling nonsense at the child. She goes very still for a long moment that seems to hang without end, before she turns to look him over. She blinks several times very rapidly, almost too fast to follow, and a complicated series of emotions flit across her face.

"Fenris," she says, a moment later, "Go back t'bed."

"What," says Fenris.

"Go back t'bed," the witch repeats, a little more firmly. Her mouth thins, as though she's preparing herself for a fight. "And not in the chair! On the bed, I won't be in it, and I'll keep an eye on the wee'un. But y'need t'get some rest."

"I do not—"

"Y' _do_ , Fenris. You look like you're about t'fall over!"

Somehow, Fenris gets the sense that this is not something the witch is willing to compromise about. She has that set to her jaw that she used to get about the mirror; bull-headed. It is odd to have it shone in his own direction.

"Sleeping will get nothing done, witch."

"I promise I won't tell Varric or Aveline that you've come home for three days, if y'go back t'bed right now," the witch says, without a trace of shame that she's attempting to _bribe_ him.

Attempting and _succeeding_ , damn her. This is deeply unfair, as it plays into the one thing that she could offer to get her way. Fenris narrows his eyes at her. "You promise, witch?"

"If y'don't go t'bed, Fenris, I'll go to the Hanged Man to t'talk to Varric," she says, eyes cool. She's already won this argument, and they are both aware of it. Fenris tries very hard to hate her. "Right now, y'know I will, you couldn't stop me if y'tried. So, yes, I promise not t'tell them."

"If I sleep."

" _Only_ if y'sleep."

"I am not a child, witch, I do not need to be told when to rest!"

"You're behaving like one," the witch retorts. "Can y'even stand up without dying?"

Fenris chooses to glare at her, because he cannot say for certain that she is not correct. He is not about to attempt standing while she's watching, either, because she is not, perhaps, entirely wrong. He also does not want to _admit_ that she is not perhaps entirely wrong, as that would be tantamount to admitting defeat and accepting surrender.

There is one acceptable option, and that is to ignore the other options entirely.

He takes it.

"Do not lose the child, witch," Fenris says, glowering only a little.

"Y'wouldn't' have come if y'didn't plan t'trust me with him," the witch says, very reasonably, which is somehow even more infuriating.

Fenris, as it turns out, cannot stand when the witch is _reasonable_. "Do not go near the Gallows."

"No," she says. "I never do."

The quiet, painful cool of her voice is unlike anything Fenris has heard from the witch ever before. He squints at her, hunting for whatever the strangeness is, but can't find it. The witch's shoulders hunch up around her ears, and for a moment, it's like no time has passed at all, and Hawke's shadow is backlit violent red by the smoking remains of the Chantry explosion.

But it smooths out, and there is nothing left but calm in her face. She moves sharply like a bird, tipping her head back and forth. There is something of a crow in it, a smeary creature made of ash, a nightmare thing, there and then gone.

_You may not be so far off about needing to rest_ , Fenris thinks darkly.

It is weakness, but it is not weakness that he has any say in. The witch has the nerve to pointedly raise her eyebrows at him.

"Are you going t'bed, or not?" she asks. It is very clear which option she prefers.

Fenris glares at her.

The witch takes this with very good grace, which only makes it worse.

" _Fine_ ," growls Fenris, and goes. There is no door to slam, only the witch's curtain to partition her room from the rest of the place. If he didn't feel so foul, he'd stay awake just to spite her.

Unfortunately, he _does_ feel foul.

The witch's bed is wider than he expected, and more comfortable. Fenris fights annoyance. The blankets are a mess. There is no reason for this. The day is begun, he is not—

He is still fighting the annoyance as he crawls into the witch's bed, and then he falls asleep.

—

This is how they come to pass the days, as winter settles over Kirkwall, and Fenris settles into the alienage. The witch is up with the sun when it deigns to peek from behind the greyscale of cloud-cover, shivering light down the vhenadahl's near-bare branches. One breath of wind would be enough to strip it, but the air is perfectly still, save for the hustles and sigh of the elves streaming in and out of the alienage gates.

Belatedly, Fenris remembers why he does not enjoy the alienage.

It is so _miserable_ here.

But the witch seems content enough, bustling the child about on the meagre curve of her hip, only smiling when anyone asks her a question about it. She evades it so thoroughly that Fenris would almost think she were trying to protect them both.

Fenris sleeps more, in these first few weeks, than he has slept in possibly his entire life. It is a strange routine; the witch rises and takes the child with her, and Fenris crawls into the space left warm in bed. He does not know where she goes in the mornings—out into the alienage, he assumes, though to do what, he does not know.

He is asleep through it, regardless.

Fenris allows himself to sleep until noon-bell, and then the witch returns.

It is one of these mornings, after he has dragged himself from the witch's bed and back into the kitchen to sit with a cup of long-gone-cold elfroot tea, when the witch comes blowing in with the babe in her arms and the winter wind biting at her heels.

Fasta vass, it is _cold_ —

"Iseth!"

Fenris cracks open one eye to glance at her. The witch is pink in the cheeks, bright-eyed and finished divesting the child of a thick scarf. He did not imagine that she said something. "What?"

"For the wee'un. I think we ought t'call him Iseth!"

"And what does _that_ mean, witch?"

It takes her a moment to reply, but when she does, her brows pull together in faint consternation. "Y'don't hate it, do you?"

"I do not," Fenris says, and exhales heavily. She is impossible. "But I cannot read your mind. What does it mean?"

The witch fiddles with hem of her tunic, and it occurs to Fenris that she is not pink simply from the cold—the witch is _blushing_. The cold could only explain the first few minutes of the bite, but it remains, staining her skin far longer than it ought.

Fenris is appalled.

The colour in the witch's cheeks deepens. "It's nothing bad!"

"Witch."

"Really, it isn't!"

" _Witch_."

"Fire, Fenris. It means fire!"

Fenris pauses. Blinks. Ponders it for a long moment, and then another. The witch does not entirely manage to look him in the eye, choosing instead to stare at the floor and her knuckles in turn, but Fenris does not begrudge her this.

It is no small thing, choosing a name.

"I think it suits him? He's just so small, and always so warm, and sometimes he laughs and—" the witch has started to babble, knotting her fingers through one another, voice gone high and panicky. Fenris had forgotten she allowed this, the vicious little zig-zag of her own distrust.

She had not always been so impossible. Fenris owes her an apology, but he has no idea where to start.

Here, perhaps.

"Do you like it?" he asks, very slowly. He stares at a spot left of her ear, careful not to meet her gaze and startle her. The witch is trying; he can smell no new blood on her, and her magic feels less like old rust than it used to. It burns less. She is _trying_.

And so Fenris can try, too.

"I—" the witch breaks off to blink at him. "I wouldn't have said it if I didn't, I don't think?"

"Then I have no objections," says Fenris. It is easy to give her this.

The witch's face lights up like a lamp, quick bright joy. She tucks her hair behind her ear again, wraps her arms around herself in imitation of an embrace, and _beams_ at him like unfiltered sunlight.

For a terrible moment, Fenris has the very foreign thought that it might be nice to _hug_ her.

Isabela used to hug the witch as a matter of course, all loose limbs and easy laughter over the crackle of the fire in the Hanged Man. Varric and Hawke, as well; they always seemed to find casual touch so simple. Fenris is still no good, in this; carrying the child about is one thing, but the witch is quite another.

It should not be so simple to make her so happy. He is aware she must be lonely, and perhaps it is this awareness that prompts the urge to wrap his arms around the slim of her shoulders.

Fenris does not indulge it, but it is there all the same.

The day whiles away like this, what little daylight there is passing away above their heads. The candles in the alienage windows prickle along his skin, a thousand little glowing lights. The witch puts up two, and leaves them to burn down.

There is something of home to the ritual, perhaps. He would not know. He has no comparison.

_Home_ is not a concept that Fenris has ever been able to grasp.

"Fenris," she says, that evening after they've managed to get some food into the child, and have settled down in front of the fire with a set of wooden blocks that Fenris had scavenged from the docks a day previous when no one was looking.

"Hmn?"

"D'you remember—" the witch pauses. hesitates, then barrels on, "—oh, I s'pose it was a very long time ago, but do you remember—the magistrate's son? Kelder, in the ruins, he—"

"Ah," says Fenris. The memory is thick with blood and disgust, the slight lift of Hawke's eyebrow. He'd not known her, then. He'd known the witch even less. "Yes. I remember. What od it?"

"I was thinking about—children, Fenris, he took children. Elvhen children. I don't think I understood, then. Maybe I was naïve! But now…"

And she trails off, her gaze dropping to the child between them, chewing happily on his blocks. He's very small, the shiny pearl of new teeth only just beginning to push out into his mouth. He gurgles at them gleefully.

It is not difficult to tell what is going through her mind.

_I would be more furious, now. I wouldn't forgive it so easily_.

Fenris knows the feeling. It remains buried beneath his sternum, the burning violent regard for this tiny creature who barely has a name.

"Is it too late t'say thank you for killing him?" asks the witch. Her hands are knotted in her lap, twitching like she's trying not to wring them. "I'd heard stories, y'know. The alienage was safer, after."

"It is your home," says Fenris, which is a stupid thing to say, but he does not always know how to be kind to her, even when she has done nothing to warrant his cruelty. It has been a learning curve, living in the south. _She_ has been a learning curve, now more than ever.

Eight years, and Fenris is still trying to get it right.

She blinks at him several times, a shatterbox impression of sunlight through leaves, dark-light-dark. Her eyes are very green, the witch. It startles him, sometimes.

"And it was the right thing," he adds, quietly. "He did not deserve to live."

Something eases in the witch's face, though whatever it is stabs at a spot tender behind his ribs. He can remember the witch smiling at him directly only rarely, but she does it now; full and wide and sweet, utterly without guile.

It turns his stomach in a hundred ways.

"Underneath all the grumpiness you're really quite nice," the witch says. Smiling, still. "I'm glad y'decided t'come back, Fenris."

Fenris does not know how to answer this. _If there was anyone else, witch_ , he wishes to say, _I would have gone there_.

But there _is_ no one else; there is only Kirkwall, and there is the witch, and there is the sharp tug beneath his heart when he sees the witch blow a bubble against the top of the child's head, affection in every gesture.

He cannot tell her this. He does not have the words.

Perhaps he does not need them, however; the witch has turned her attention back to the child and his blocks, and it is silent and still inside of Fenris' head for the first time in a very long time. He did not think it possible to find this sort of peace in her presence. It has always been too sharp between them, too hurting in a way they had both contributed to.

He is aware that his contribution was always more a cause of their enmity than hers. The word _monster_ still feels like ash on his tongue.

Fenris had been angry. In many ways, he is angry still.

But he is no longer angry at the witch. How can he be, when she has asked him not one question he was not willing to answer? How can he, when the child sleeps in her bed without waking, and cries only he hasn't had something to eat on time? How can he, when she has asked nothing— _nothing_ —of him in return?

He is not in the habit of being ungrateful for things.

Not to Hawke. Not to Varric. Not to the witch, now, either.

"Do not thank me, witch," Fenris says under his breath. He says it only because he knows she will not hear; she is entirely consumed with engaging the child, and would not answer him even if she could.

Fenris shakes his head to himself. Sighs. Speaks lower, yet again.

"I have done nothing to deserve it."

—

Fenris is not avoiding Varric.

He is avoiding the inevitable crooked eyebrow and the mocking that is endemic to Varric. These are not the same thing. But he is not avoiding Varric.

There is simply very little reason to go to the Hanged Man. The child and the witch are in the alienage; Aveline is busy with the guard, and thus Fenris is not avoiding Varric. The timing has been less than ideal. That is all.

But Fenris knows, as soon as he closes the door behind him that Varric has been here or is here still, and he will be able to avoid it no longer.

(To absolutely no one's surprise, Fenris is, in fact, avoiding Varric.)

The witch perks up at the sight of him. Fenris does not think he will ever entirely get used to it; she is a sleeping-springtime thing, her hair loose and dark, green growing things. She smiles at him without artifice, and he does not think he will ever get used to _that_ , either.

"Varric says that if y'don't stop avoiding him, he's going t'set the Carta on you," the witch says, very cheerfully for someone imparting such a threat. "And the merchant's guild. And Donnic. And if y'ignore all of _them_ , he's going t'set Aveline on, after that!"

"As though the Captain of the guard does not have better things to do," mutters Fenris under his breath, though he would not put it past Aveline to take part in the farce. And Aveline, regrettably, is the only one that Fenris fears might be able to force him into something he does not wish to do, if she thinks it is for his own good.

Fenris would not put it past Varric to appeal to Aveline's better sense.

There are, Fenris reflects, no lows to which Varric will not sink.

"Varric worries, that's all," says the witch.

Fenris knows this, too. But the witch is often in _need_ of someone's worry. She requires someone to look after her; much of the time, she is so very unaware of how the world watches her.

Or doesn't, as the case may be.

He has not forgotten that Varric used to pay off the undercity gangs to leave the witch alone. It strikes him that not much has changed. Varric is likely _still_ paying off the undercity gangs to leave her alone, except that now that is moot, as Fenris will look after her whether he wants to or not.

"I do not require it, witch."

"I don't see how telling _me_ that is going t'change anything?" the witch says.

She is not wrong. Fenris keeps his mouth stubbornly shut, lest he agree with her aloud. He glares at her instead.

To his very great surprise, the witch starts to laugh. "Oh, Fenris. That's going t'stop working if y'keep doing it so often!"

"How," Fenris says. He is not offended. He is not offended at all.

"Well, now I know that y'don't really _mean_ it—"

"What makes you think I do not mean it, witch—"

"—you're really not _that_ frightening, I _did_ see you clean Iseth's face off at supper—"

"—I mean it every single time; I have not ever _not_ meant it—"

"—and now that I know it doesn't really _mean_ anything, I s'pose I'll have to tell Varric—"

"—if you tell Varric _anything_ , witch, I swear I will—"

"—or Isabela! Or Hawke! Oh, d'you think I ought t'tell Hawke—"

"—Hawke is _worse_ —!"

"—or Bethany! Oh, I ought t'tell Bethany, she'll think it very funny, because it _is_ very funny, you're so very grumpy all the time—"

"—what am I going to—witch, you will _not_ tell anyone _anything_ —"

And then she laughs again, mouth puckering into a mischievous little smile that Fenris has never seen in his entire life. There is something to it that he cannot entirely name; a clean pure amusement like glacial river water, clear all the way down. He would not associate it with her, not when he knows her only in blood and rust and roots growing up through the ground, but then—

Truly, Fenris does not know her. Perhaps he ought not be surprised by this.

"Varric wanted me t'tell you that he'll be waiting for you in the Hanged Man, and if y'don't come, he'll be very upset," the witch says.

Fenris sighs heavily. "Is there a threat in there somewhere, witch?"

"Yes, I think so?"

He groans.

He did not want to do this today. He _wanted_ to sit with the child, to listen to the quiet hum of the witch's voice as she reads, to the drip of the rain turning into mist.

He did not want to tromp all the way up to Lowtown to entertain Varric Tethras.

But there is no helping it.

Varric will be even more unbearable than the witch, if he's left to his own devices. The witch, at least, has some sense in her head.

Not much, mind you, but some.

Fenris pauses, looks at her. The firelight is all that's left; the sun sinks down into the Waking Sea and leaves the horizon a streaked-out mess of indigo and crimson, bloody scars across the sky. It is nothing like the night that the world exploded. It is so cold and so wet, Fenris almost expects it to begin to snow.

"Would you mind if I go to make him quiet, witch? I will not be long."

The edges of the witch's lips curl. She is—almost pretty, when she does that. Almost soft. Fenris shakes the thought away, and waits for her answer.

"I think I'd be disappointed if y'didn't? Varric misses you!"

Fenris groans.

Impossible.

She is _impossible_.

—

Fenris comes home early.

Merrill looks up, blinking owlishly, when the front door opens. The sun's been down an hour, but _only_ an hour; it's barely dark! The alienage has slowed only to its meagre bits and bobs, the candles glowing at the foot of the vhenadahl the last of the day's light. Bruise-blue nighttime hovers around the city's shoulders, just waiting.

He's swaying in the doorframe to her bedroom, eyes half-lidded, a funny little quirk to his mouth that she'd call fond if she didn't know better. Fenris' shoulders are loose and easy, the lines to his face more relaxed than she's ever seen. He closes the door behind him with a quiet _click_ , liquid grace in the lines.

"There you are, witch," Fenris says, a warm, slow exhalation like a sigh.

"Well, yes, where else would I be?" Merrill asks him. "You're home early. I didn't expect t'see you 'til morning… did y'have a good time?"

"Yes," he says, and that's all.

Merrill isn't sure what she's expecting, but whatever she was expecting isn't what happens. Fenris ambles towards her, tucked around Iseth as she is, and stops only when he brushes the side of the bed. She blinks up at him, her book open on her knees, the flicker of the candlelight glinting gold and red in the corner of her eye. She thinks—

Oh, Creators, she doesn't know _what_ she thinks.

"Fenris," Merrill says. "Is everything alright? Are y'going to come to bed? Or are y'going to sleep in the chair again?"

"I would prefer to sleep where you do," Fenris says. He tips forwards just enough to sink down against the bed, against her side, against _her_. There's wine on his breath and something else besides, a little sweet, a little sour. He presses his face into her hair behind her ear, breathes in. "You are very warm."

"Oh," Merrill murmurs. She doesn't dare move. "Aren't you going t'be very upset with me when you're back t'normal?"

"I am never upset with you, witch," Fenris tells her.

"Well, now I _know_ you're going t'be upset with me," she laughs very softly. Merrill doesn't have it in her to push him away, even if it would certainly be in both of their best interests. Fenris so rarely allows himself the leeway of comfort.

"No," he says. "Iseth is asleep. I will not be upset with you."

Somehow, Merrill doesn't think morning-sober-Fenris is going to much appreciate what nighttime-drunk-Fenris thinks is the correct course of action. But he's rather heavy, and most of his weight is already on top of her, and _really_ , it's not as though there's anything wrong with a full night's sleep! Creators, but Fenris could _use_ a full night's sleep. She can't imagine how he's managing on the few hours he gets when she takes Iseth out to walk the fish market in the mornings. "Shouldn't y'take your armour off? It's very spiky."

"Hmn," Fenris hums, content and bleary in agreement.

Metal _clanks_ as it hits the ground, dark spiky pauldrons and gauntlets and greaves. They settle like shadows on the ground, and Merrill finds herself helping Fenris crawl into bed next to her, shivering against the gush of cold air he'd let in from outside. He huffs against her temple, tucking himself against her back.

"Turn out the light, witch," Fenris rumbles into her ear.

With a tiny puff, the candle blows out, and the room plunges into darkness.

Merrill doesn't know how long she holds her breath, but it's quite a long time. Fenris breathes at her back, and the rain's finally stopped; there is only the far-away crash of the sea against the breakwater, and very little else. His arm is heavy over her waist, and she doesn't think she's ever been this warm in her life.

"Please don't be angry with me," Merrill whispers into the dark.

Fenris, rather predictably, says nothing at all.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_tbc_.


	3. knowing nothing but rivers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **notes** : i'm not dead! between winter depression and pandemic fine, life's been _something_ lmao  
>  **notes2** : _radioactive_ — marina & the diamonds.

—

.

.

.

.

.

Dawn creeps in pale pink and heather grey, and Merrill wakes to find arms around her waist and someone snoring in her ear.

She freezes in place.

Oh, Creators.

She doesn't move. She doesn't even _breathe_. Merrill stays stock-still, trapped between Iseth's tiny body starfished at her front and Fenris curled around her back, perfectly unable to move without waking one or the other.

Waking the baby risks crying.

And waking Fenris risks… well, risks _Fenris_.

Merrill isn't actually sure which one would be worse! It hurts her heart when Iseth cries, every single time, but Fenris—

He barely sleeps as it is.

And Merrill isn't going to pretend that she's not worried, a little bit. She thinks about his teeth behind his lips pulled back in a snarl, and even though it was a long time ago and no one's keeping track, it hadn't been—it hadn't been very good, for either of them. And now his arm is heavy over her side, a warm weight that strange and uncomfortable only for how comfortable it is.

Merrill knows that Fenris sleeps in her bed, in the mornings when she takes Iseth out for long endless walks, listening to the babe's babble very seriously, and leaving the babe's papae to his own devices. She'd told him to, after all, and he's been in a much better mood since. Mythal, if she'd known that this was all it would take, she'd have convinced Isabela to drug his tea two days after they'd met.

But it's one thing to know that he sleeps in her bed, and it's full-well another when she's the one waking up to his arms wrapped around her! She doesn't even dare to crane her neck around to see if Fenris is awake or not. His breathing is still even and slow, puffing warm against the side of her throat.

Merrill hadn't imagined that he'd _snore_! She tucks the thought away to giggle to herself about later, when the grumpy man isn't pressed so close that she can feel the rise and fall of his chest.

Morning creeps in further, grey into pale gold as the sun rises to chase the night away.

It's very strange to hold herself like this, so quiet and unmoving, the animal warmth of other living people around her. Feels a bit like home. Like what the clan used to feel like, all limbs and bodies and not knowing where one person ends and another begins.

Yes, just like home, Merrill thinks, and it would be so easy to go back to sleep and pretend that everything is fine and that this is normal.

But—

Well.

_Fenris_.

Fingers contract against the cut of her waist. Merrill blinks at the wall, determined to still be asleep. Or pretending to be, rather. Make-believe is simple when it's important! If she pretends hard enough, Fenris might not even—

He murmurs something sleepy against the back of Merrill's neck, too low to quite hear. She wonders how they must look—what a strange little family, all light and dark! But it always ends up like this, all twisted up together in the sheets: Fenris breathing slow and even into her skin, Iseth so still he might be dead, and Merrill herself tucked between the two.

It's not such a terrible place to be, if she's very honest.

Better than sleeping cold, anyway, and _much_ better than sleeping rough.

"You are thinking very loudly," Fenris murmurs, a rumble that goes through her entire body and resonates in the cavern of her chest.

"Why d'you always say that?" Merrill tells him, careful into the silent air. She keeps her voice very quiet so as not to wake the baby. "I don't think I do, y'know."

"Because you _do_ think very loudly, witch," Fenris says. There's a soft little curl of amusement in the words, and he hooks his chin over her shoulder.

Merrill doesn't move, though it still startles her that he touches her so easily. She doesn't want to think about it too much, because that might make things hard, and doesn't want to let herself lean too far back into him, because that would make things even _harder_.

"I don't," Merrill sniffs. "I'm going back t'sleep if you're just going t'be mean!"

Fenris makes a sound that isn't quite a snort, but isn't quite not a snort, either. He extracts himself from around, oddly particular about it, careful not to jostle her overmuch. Merrill squinches her eyes shut so that she doesn't have the opportunity to glare at him.

"Someone must feed you, if the witch will not," Fenris says, quietly.

He scoops up the babe from Merrill's side without a word—she only knows because of the change in weight, and the sudden, frigid lack of baby-warmth.

It shouldn't surprise her, but it does.

Fenris is just being so very strange! It's almost as though he's hit his head, he's being _far_ too kind about things she knows that he's been unkind about, before. It's not like him at all!

It'd make sense if he'd hit his head, Merrill reasons.

And if he'd hit his head, he might be woozy.

And if he's woozy, he's going to fall over and hurt himself, or worse, the _baby_!

Oh, _Creators_.

Merrill scrabbles up and out of bed and around the corner into the great cavern of the kitchen before she quite knows what she's doing, and finds—

Well, that Fenris hasn't fallen over and crushed Iseth, which is such a relief that the sigh of it escapes her aloud.

"Fenris," Merrill says, pitched a little too high, forced into clarity around the panic in her throat, "Don't move."

Fenris pauses in his rummaging through the icebox to look at Merrill over his shoulder, eyebrow crooked and his arms full of Iseth (and Iseth's breakfast).

"Yes?" he says.

"I think y've hit your head," Merrill tells him.

"And why do you think that?"

"Because you're being very strange," Merrill says, and he _is_ being very strange, that's true. She doesn't think there's any blood in his hair—there'd been none on the pillow—but she'll need to get closer to be sure. "I don't want you t'hurt yourself, I need t'check your head."

"For _what_ , witch?"

"For lumps?"

Fenris stares at her for a moment. Merrill puts on her very best stubborn face—the one that always made Hawke laugh, for reasons that Merrill still doesn't entirely understand—and so he'll know that she means it, this way, and no amount of fussing will get either of them out of it.

Merrill isn't afraid of Fenris, anymore, and she _certainly_ isn't afraid of sending him back to bed if he needs to lie down! Even if it means she has to recruit Varric! Even if she has to recruit _Aveline_!

(It had been good of Varric to insist that Fenris visit the Hanged Man. He needed it, Merrill thinks. Varric always knows how to make a home feel like _home_ again. It hadn't been right that Fenris had wanted to stay away. He must have been very lonely.)

Fenris sighs. "I did not hit my head, witch."

"Y'don't know that," Merrill retorts. " _Y'did_ crawl into bed with me, Fenris. Y'might have hit your head, y'can't be sure!"

"Will you cease your worrying if I allow you to check?" asks Fenris. He sounds only a little bit weary, which Merrill supposes is better than how Fenris usually sounds when he thinks she's being ridiculous.

"Yes," says Merrill, jerking her chin at him. "Can y'put Iseth down while I do? I don't want you t'drop him."

"I will not _drop_ him—"

"Fenris, please."

He sighs again, heavy out through his nose, and he glances down at the wee'un in his arms with great consternation. "If you wish to be vexed about this, child, be vexed at the witch. I have nothing to do with it."

"If your papae's hit his head as hard as I think he has, you'll thank me for this," says Merrill to the babe, as kindly as she can. Creators, she knows that he doesn't like missing his breakfast—really, who _would_ —but Fenris is stubborn as a halla during a breech birth.

"I promise I did not hit my head," Fenris says again.

"Just because I can't see the hurt doesn't mean it isn't there," Merrill sniffs at him, archly. "You've been _stabbed_ and y'insisted it was fine!"

"It _was_ fine."

"Wasn't!" says Merrill, scowling. "And that's not the point, anyway! Someone ought t'look at your head!"

Fenris sighs heavily for the third time in as many minutes. He looks down at Iseth again. "When you decide to wail because you have not eaten, do not blame me. I was attempting to find you food."

Iseth stuffs his fist in his mouth and chews gummily, smiling and staring up at Fenris in that wide-eyed way that babies have, all perfectly sincere trust. Merrill's heart makes a pathetic sort of _wibbling_ sounds in her chest.

But if nothing else, this hardens her resolve. Merrill well knows she has no business having _heart wibbles_ at _Fenris_ of all people.

For a moment, neither of them says anything.

"Well? Fenris says, at last. "Are you going to inspect me or not, witch?"

Merrill blinks.

Oh, Mythal, there really _is_ something wrong with him; he barely fought her about it at all!

"Please don't move too quickly," Merrill says. Caution keeps her slow' it's easy to ignore Fenris rolling his eyes, as it's something he does so often that it hardly means anything, anymore.

"Hurry, witch, the last thing I would like is tears."

Merrill doesn't huff at him. She doesn't move any faster, either. Fenris holds very still beneath her hands, with the kind of exasperated good grace that Merrill would expect from Varric or Isabela.

"Tell me if it hurts?" Merrill says, absently. "I don't want t'make it worse…"

Fenris rather agreeably bends his head enough that Merrill can inspect him at her leisure.

And so she does, for a whole minute. But—

Nary a bloody lump to be found.

Merrill looks him over a second time, and then, frowning, looks him over a third. A distant part of her is surprised he's allowed her to touch him for this long without a fuss; an even more distant bit notes that his hair feels like what she'd expect starlight to feel like, silver and soft.

She drops back down to her feet, and she blinks at him some more. "Y'really… are fine, aren't you?"

"I did try to tell you that, witch," Fenris says, very patiently. "May I feed the child now, if you are convinced I will not accidentally harm him?"

Oh, he's not just being strange, but now, _nice_? That's worse! It presses something shivery-tender in Merrill's chest, a soft squishy part of her heart that she hasn't allowed anyone to press at in a very long time. "You're really alright? You're not lying t'make me leave it alone?"

Fenris stares at her for what feels like a very long time. Merrill wants to fiddle with her braids, uncomfortable beneath the intensity of his gaze.

He always did have a habit of somehow making her insides squirm.

"I have no reason to lie to you," he says, quietly. "It would not be productive."

The words settle in Merrill's stomach, lead and stone, weightily reassuring in their simplicity.

He _is_ still Fenris, after all. He's just also… Fenris-with-a-baby. A little softer. Just a little.

"Breakfast, then?" she offers, after a moment. "For us, too! Y'don't mind biscuits, do you? I don't know, y'normally sleep through it, I'm not sure what y'like—"

Fenris' mouth twitches. It could mean anything. It could mean he's laughing at her, or it could mean nothing at all. Merrill knows she really needs to stop reading into things; he's Fenris, and Iseth is Iseth, and the world hasn't stopped turning because they all slept in one bed and now Fenris has decided to be nice to her. It's just a little thing, isn't it? Just a little thing.

(A little thing, a little softer, a tiny little baby.)

Merrill thinks about texture, and about the clan, and about Lyna and Tamlen. Lost things. Found things, too. Creators, but she misses the Brecilian air. Sometimes it aches in her teeth to look at Iseth; he's so lovely, and he doesn't have any roots.

It isn't _right_.

"Biscuits require teeth, witch. He does not have enough of those."

"Not for him? He gets t'have applemash. The biscuits are for us, s'long as the rats haven't got in again."

" _Again_?"

"Well, yes—"

Fenris makes a hot quick sound at the back of his throat, disbelief but delirious. Not anger. Incredulous. Merrill isn't all that surprised, honestly. He's like that, is Fenris. She's only still just beginning to realize how much.

Merrill shoos him off and sets about finagling the applemash—Mythal, she knows she left it in the coldbox, where has it _gone_ —flicking her fingers at the hearth to bring the embers back to life. She's very aware of Fenris' gaze the whole time, steady on her shoulders.

He's not angry, she's fairly sure! It doesn't have that edge. But—bemused, maybe?

Bemused seems like a better word for it.

And once the food is sorted (no rats, Mythal'enaste), and Iseth has managed to make a mess of himself, burbling with baby-glee about the applemash, Merrill finally forces herself to look Fenris in the face.

He's watching her, eyes half-lidded.

"Why're y'staring so?"

"Mornings are not my forte, witch," Fenris says, very slowly. This is true, Merrill knows; Fenris never quite seems like he's all the way into the world until well past noon. The cup of tea she'd shoved into his hands steams thinly. "You leave while I sleep. Where do you go?"

Merrill can feel her cheeks heating. "Babies aren't very quiet, y'know!"

"I am aware."

The flush turns mottled. "I-I s'pose I thought y'needed the sleep? We never go very far, just long enough t'let you get some rest? He seems t'like the fish market?"

Fenris blinks at her slowly. "I am not upset, witch. But I would come with you, today, if you are not averse."

_He's yours_ , Merrill has to bite down on the words. _He belongs t'you, I wouldn't_ —but of course Iseth doesn't belong to anyone except Iseth, and Merrill is secretly beginning to think that maybe the babe belongs to them both, an even distribution between them. Iseth certainly seems to think so!

And it sits like a secret behind her heart, a quiet little flame that warms her from the inside out.

"Oh," says Merrill. "Oh! Really? Are y'sure? It's a bit of a walk. Not as far as the Viscount's gardens, but Varric says I shouldn't go in there anymore—"

"If it would not be a burden," Fenris says. And then, softer, "I would like to."

The words slip beneath the surface of Merrill's skin, into her musculature and down underneath her bones, until it settles in that far-away place where she keeps Iseth's laughter. It's not quite the same, but it's close, and that's alright.

They stumble less than they used to, the both of them. They stumble less than they did a fortnight ago!

But it's still a learning thing between. How to be kind.

(Tamlen would have hated Fenris, but Merrill thinks that Lyna would enjoy his sense of humour. It's under there, somewhere! Fenris _does_ keep saying things that are secretly funny! Very dry, but secretly funny.)

"Alright then," Merrill beams at him. "You're going t'need a scarf!"

—

Merrill hums as she weaves through the fish market. The air is thick with salt and rust, the acrid tang of fishmeal sharp on her tongue as she breathes. Fenris trails half a step behind her at a more sedate pace. He carries Iseth—it's hardly a secret that Fenris adores the wee'un—and it's with only half an ear that Merrill listens to the baby babble nonsense while she pokes about. Between the fishmongers shouting each other down and the stream of people and the ships tied out on the quay, there's not a quiet moment in to be had.

Oh, it's always so _alive_!

"How d'you feel about clams?" Merrill asks him over her shoulder.

Fenris raises a slow eyebrow. He looks very warm in his travelling cloak, Iseth's dark eyes bright below his chin. "I do not hate them, if that is what you are asking, witch."

"I s'pose it'll do," she says, more to herself than to him. Fenris isn't a picky sort; she's not sure why she's surprised. "Stew?"

"If you must," he says, but he doesn't sound upset about it.

Merrill is beginning to suspect that Fenris rather likes to put on a show.

But she keeps finding herself accidentally bumping into him. She doesn't mean to! But Iseth's little hands keep catching against Merrill's winter cloak, holding on and giggling as though they're playing, and then she's tumbling neatly into Fenris' side, she doesn't know how it keeps _happening_!

If he were anyone else, she'd say that he was _hovering_!

"You can just walk beside me, y'know," Merrill points out. "I wouldn't trip into you so much?"

"I could," Fenris agrees, and proceeds to stay exactly where he is, just half a step behind.

"That's not walking beside me?"

"No," Fenris says. A slow, mischievous little grin lights across his face. "It isn't."

"…Are you fair _certain_ y'didn't hit your head?"

"Did you not make sure yourself, witch?"

"Yes, but…"

Fenris has the gall to _grin_ at her, wide and terrible, and Merrill gets the sudden, distinct impression that this is not going to be the last time Fenris uses her own worry against her. That's an Isabela thing to do. That's a _Hawke_ thing to do!

Merrill narrows her eyes. "You're very unfair when you want t'be, did y'know?"

"No," he says, more airily than she's ever heard him say anything in her life. "I had no idea."

"Is that—Fenris, are you teasing?"

"And what would make you think that?" Fenris asks, but he's still _grinning_ , and when she turns around to catch him out at it, he's ducked away and taken Iseth with him, entirely out of reach of the scolding on the tip of her tongue.

Merrill's mouth drops open.

He is teasing! He _is_! That's teasing! She stops for a moment to process this, as she hadn't known that Fenris knew _how_ to tease. He'd always gotten so _snippy_ , before, when she'd tried to get him to lighten up a bit. She hadn't thought he'd had it in him, and it's sort of funny, because he seems so new at it!

But she doesn't think she hates it, either.

It's quite rare that Fenris grins, at least in her direction. Even rarer that he makes fun! But it's nice, and Merrill finds herself hurrying after him, only barely catching the back of his travelling cloak with the tips of her fingers.

Fenris blinks down at her over his shoulder. "Yes?"

"I don't want t'lose you," Merril huffs, blowing hair out of her eyes and faintly pink in the cheeks beneath her vallaslin. "Hawke would be so disappointed in me!"

"Only Hawke?"

"Oh, Varric would be, too, I s'pose? And Aveline. And Isabela. Everyone, really?"

"That is not what I meant," Fenris sighs at her.

"What did y'mean, then?"

"Nothing," says Fenris. He's frowning a little, shakes his head. "Never mind, witch. Pay it no attention."

Which means that Merrill absolutely _should_ pay it attention, but she doesn't want to argue right now. They've done enough arguing in their lives, she thinks, and walking along without it for once is nice.

Merrill doesn't want to ruin it quite yet, is all.

And so she stays close in the crush of the market, picking over the clams and the last of the fish bones wrapped up in brown paper that leaks only a little. Merrill tucks her scarf in closer around her throat, burying away from the bite of the sea wind.

Creators, she'll be happy when they're home. The shivers haven't taken her quite yet, but it won't be long, now. The air slips damp into her soul, and freezes her down to her bones. Merrill wraps her arms around herself, hugs herself tight. The warmth stays better, that way.

And Fenris, despite her best attempts to keep the cold out without him _noticing_ that she's attempting to keep the cold out, notices.

"You're cold," he says.

"Isn't that s'posed t'be a question?"

"No," says Fenris, flatly. "You are cold."

Creators, but he's so _frowny_! Merrill never really noticed how much, but then, she didn't spend much time looking at Fenris. It's much harder to ignore when it's pointed right at her!

(And when it's not so angry. Merrill knows what Fenris angry looks like, all acrid and bitter and sharp like broken glass between her teeth. But this isn't anger, not really. This is—well, it's something else.)

She blinks at him. "What d'you expect? Usually, I'm carrying a baby. Babies are warm."

"I expect that you might have dressed for the weather," Fenris says, very grumpily. But he crooks an eyebrow at her, and for a moment Merrill is thrown by the incongruence of it: it's such an elegant thing, slow and deliberate, exactly like something Isabela would it. But it's more interesting to look at, on Fenris, all light and dark, silver-shot shadows like moonlight through leaves at night.

"I _am_ wearing a scarf," Merrill points out. "And my cloak. And even _shoes_!"

(Horrible, uncomfortable things. Merrill scowls down at them, and means it. Her feet feel all blocky. It's so unnatural!)

She startles when she realizes how close Fenris is, all of a sudden. She can feel his breath against her cheek, his mouth so close to her ear.

"Warm yourself, witch," Fenris murmurs, so low that no one else could hear, even if they were straining for it. "I do not want you catching something."

"Yes, I know, Varric would never let you forget it," Merrill says patiently. She pulls her hands into the folds of her cloak, jams them beneath her arms, and barely has to think about it to warm the air inside of her lungs. She buffs, blowing hair out of her eyes for a second time. Oh, Mythal, it's getting long, she's going to have to start braiding it back.

There are a lot of things wrapped up in the braids, Merrill thinks, very distantly. Maybe now isn't really the best time to deal with them.

"Merrill," Fenris says, quietly. _Witch_ , she can hear him saying, if they were anywhere else.

He's very careful about the strangest things.

"I'm fine, Fenris," Merrill says, forcing herself to brightness. She hitches up a smile that doesn't feel too fake, at least.

(Oh, but Merrill misses Iseth's hot steady weight in her arms. The babe makes everything seem so very _real_ , somehow; he's so much a part of the world that Merrill doesn't have time to get caught up in her own head. It's been a wondrous change of pace—there's no thinking about blood and magic and death and mirrors when a tiny baby is demanding her attention. She thinks that it must be like what being Hawke feels like all the time! There's no-one as real as Hawke.)

He frowns very deeply at her.

"Oh, stop it, if y'keep making that face, it's going t'stick like that, and then we'll have t'make fun of you!" Merrill says, before she can stop herself.

Fenris stops very abruptly. He stares at Merrill for a long, flat second that hangs unbroken between them in the wintry air. It goes on forever; he stares and stares and stares.

And then he laughs.

It's a jagged, rusty thing, low and unused but somehow—it's not like Varric's belly-laughter, or Hawke's wholly unselfconscious snorting, or Isabela's rich rollicking cheer. It's something else that's all it's own, even as the sound of it curls up brilliantly warm as an ember in the center of Merrill's chest. She finds herself smiling at him, shy and sweet and only a little.

"You have a very nice laugh, Fenris, did y'know?" Merrill says, after a moment. "Y'ought t'do it more."

The laughter cuts off as abruptly as it had started. Fenris seems to have frozen with it, staring at her without moving.

Merrill pokes him in the side. "Fenris?"

"I do not think that is a choice I have," Fenris says, very carefully. He's very quiet for a very long time, or what feels like a very long time, clutching Iseth close to his chest in the cold.

"No," says Merrill, very gently. She's not sure that she ought to touch him, right now. Better that she doesn't, probably, even though she thinks the comfort might do him some good. "Maybe not. I s'pose laughing isn't really a choice."

Fenris keeps his mouth clamped shut.

Oh, Mythal.

"We've supper," Merrill tells him, softly. The brown paper bag feels inadequate in her hands, but something is better than nothing. "We can go back now, if y'want?"

He watches her out of the corner of his eye. The cool winter sunshine slicks off his hair, and the steadfastness of the gaze sets something horrible in her stomach to twisting tight into a knot. Creators, but Merrill never knows what he _wants_ from her.

But it's never easy. Iseth's dark little face and bright big eyes, the teething baby smile—

No, never easy.

Home is hard thing.

Fenris follows Merrill back that way, regardless.

—

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.

_tbc_.


	4. the sea that inhabits me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **notes** : hey, just to address something that I think people might be worried about: this is not a sad story, we're not breaking anyone's hearts, there is only happiness here and forgiveness! real life is too crappy to write anything else, and that's just a fact.  
>  **notes2** : _when it rains_ — paramore.

—

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"Oh, Iseth, da'len, again? It's applemash! Y'love applemash! Why are you—?!"

Fenris grins at the ceiling.

The witch keeps her voice low, but not low enough not to be overheard. She is just in the other room, trying and failing to feed the child if her exasperated pleading is any indication. He listens for another minute and then a second, before he stretches and rises.

It is rare that the witch struggles so.

"Do I wish to know?" Fenris asks, leaning against the door frame, eyebrow crooked.

The witch huffs, shoving her hair out of her face, mouth set into frustrated irritation.

"He's realized that if he throws something on the floor, I'll pick it up," she says, and to Fenris' great amusement, darts down to pick up the child's tossed spoon.

"Stop it, witch," Fenris tells her. He can feel the very beginnings of a smile twitching at his lips. "He will learn."

"No!" she cries, brows drawing together and jaw dropping open. "I don't want him t'think that I can't—that I can't get him something he needs? He's so little, Fenris, it's not right."

"You feel strongly about this," Fenris says, does not ask. It is in the way she says the words, as though she is hedging a bet, or preparing herself for a fight. A set jaw beneath the pale of her skin, ready for a knife between the ribs.

"It's why y'have a clan, did you know?" the witch says. Her shoulders draw up around her ears, and she takes a long, steadying breath. "So that y'don't have t'do things alone."

"I am aware."

She shrugs. There is saltwater grief beneath it, but it ripples away. "It's easier, when there are other people t'help."

"Is that why you are struggling to get him to eat?"

"Oh, fine, _be_ like that!" the witch throws a rag at his head, shaking her head and chewing on her laughter, half disbelief and half exapseration. "If y'think you're so good at it, _you_ feed him, then!"

"Fine," says Fenris.

It will not be difficult. He has fed the child before.

He did not expect that the spoon-throwing was going to expand to _food_ throwing.

A string of filth and proper Tevene leaves him. " _Viri sánguinum inferno, puer, et posuit illud dicula auxilium mihi_ —"

The witch, in the background, is trying desperately not to giggle.

"Oh, Fenris," she says, laughter in her mouth, "Stop, stop, y'have applemash on your face, don't move—"

He sighs, and does not move to wipe the offending slurry away. In the long run, it will be better to let her have this. The witch rises up on her toes to reach his face; her hands are very gentle, and for half a breath of a moment, Fenris allows himself to lean into it.

"There," the witch says, after a moment. Her mouth is still curled up sweet, and the laughter has moved into her eyes and settled there. "All better."

"Is it?" Fenris finds himself asking, head bent in towards her.

"Well, there isn't anything else on your face that isn't your face, Fenris, so—?" the witch frowns at him, just a little, trailing off into nothing. Her hand hovers there, against his cheekbone, seething heat.

He is not sure what he means to say, but it does not matter, because someone else speaks first.

"Shit, Broody, are we interrupting something?"

Fenris closes his eyes for a moment longer than a standard blink, cursing everything. He does not bother to turn to glare at Varric: there is no point, as the dwarf will only waggle his eyebrows exactly as he did the night at the Hanged Man. Fenris will have to find a way to discreetly dump his body into the harbour for it.

(And it _would_ have to be discreet. The witch would protest the mistreatment, and Fenris has no desire to argue with her about this particular use of his time. The dwarf must go in the drink. That is all there is to it.)

"Oh," the witch says. Her hand drops away, and she peeks around Fenris' frame. "Oh, good morning, Varric! Did y'bring Aveline t'meet Iseth?"

"Give her a minute, Daisy, she's still trying to figure out how to politely ask if Broody over there stole the kid," says Varric, not unkindly.

Fenris does not dignify this with an answer. He glares over the top of the witch's head at the wall, suddenly very aware that she is wearing only a sleep-shift and that he, himself, is in nothing but colourless old breeches and a shirt full of holes.

It is one thing that the witch may see him so bare. Varric and Aveline (and, inevitably, Donnic) are quite another.

"We are getting a lock for that door," Fenris mutters darkly, speaking nearly into the top of the witch's ink-dark head. "As soon as they are gone, I swear it."

The corner of her mouth curls up, the pull of her tattoos strange and enticing. Fenris follows the lines of them; the blood writing on her collarbones slips into her shoulders, down and away underneath her clothes.

It is very rarely, but sometimes, Fenris wishes he knew what they meant.

But now is not exactly the time to meditate on the witch, or on the witch's features.

Varric is going to be intolerable, and this is a fact.

It is, therefore, a much more pressing concern. The witch will remain as she is, at least long enough that Fenris will be able to shoo Varric and whatever interlopers he has managed to finagle off. For half a split-second, Fenris is fervently glad that Hawke and Isabela are away: Varric alone is intolerable, but with Hawke and Isabela's aid, he would be _devastating_. Fenris would never sleep again for the teasing.

Neither would the witch, for that matter, but it does not bear thinking about.

Varric already regards the witch as kin. Fenris does not wish to test how deep that loyalty goes, nor how likely he is to end up in Bianca's crosshairs, should Varric be displeased about it.

He _also_ does not wish to examine the urge to shove the witch and the child behind him, to keep them from view. They are in no danger.

It should not matter even if they were, but it does. It matters.

Fenris attempts not to glare too obviously, as he turns about to face the unwanted company.

(From the smugly satisfied look on the dwarf's face, Fenris does not think he has done so well.)

"So," says Varric, in much the same tone that Fenris assumes he would employ on a reluctant spy or a recalcitrant cat or, worse, an intractable Hawke, "Someone wanna tell me what's going on?"

"I did not steal the child," Fenris sighs. That is the _last_ thing he needs today. Aveline Vallen is a force to be reckoned with at the best of times, and children are not so usually involved.

There is a reason, Fenris thinks grimly, that she is the Captain of Kirkwall's guard. Like a dog with a bone, is Aveline.

"I would not—" he starts.

"I don't think Fenris _could_ steal a person?" pipes up the witch. She is still standing perhaps too close, but the thought of her moving is torture. She pokes her head around him again, to make a face at Varric. "He's far too honest t'steal someone, especially a baby!"

"You hear that, Guard Captain? Straight from the mouths of flowers!"

Fenris had not even registered the clanking of Aveline's armour. She moves very quietly for someone in that much platemail. He is aware that if she did not tolerate him, it would be deeply concerning.

He scowls some, if only for effect.

Aveline pays this comment about as much attention as she would pay Isabela and Hawke flirting. Fenris would be offended if the situation were anything other than what it is.

Fasta vass. He wants them to go away and for the witch to make the tea that she does in the mornings when he can barely keep his eyes open, when the morning is still quiet, and the day has not truly begun.

Is this too much to ask? He does not think so.

But Aveline is wearier in the face than Fenris has seen her look in some time. There are smeary lines beneath her eyes over her freckles that he recognizes; he wears them himself, or at the very least, he used to. There is a sigh heavy in her mouth, exhaustion flaking from her shoulders.

She looks _tired_.

(Fenris realizes, with a start, that he may well be better-rested than he has been in his entire living memory. This is another thing that, as it turns out, he does not wish to examine too closely. He does not want to consider what it might say.)

"Swear it," says Aveline, overruling all other things. She stares at Fenris flatly, and then at the witch, and then at Fenris again. "Swear it on our friendship."

"He didn't, Aveline!" the witch snaps, before Fenris manages to get a word in edgewise. "Why won't y'listen t'me? He didn't!"

"Merrill," sighs Aveline. "You're biased."

"I—I'm _not_ ," the witch gasps. Her mouth drops open with her outrage, and her accent is thicker the faster she speaks. "I don't know you're talking about, Aveline, I'm not _biased_ , he didn't—!"

Fenris decides that this is as good a time as any to go and fetch the child. Varric is standing back and watching, entirely too gleeful about the goings-on, and Fenris has a feeling in his bones that very little will sway the Guard Captain from her quarry beyond hard proof that the child is not being mistreated, no matter how much the witch protests.

The witch is, after all, biased.

But there is something to be said for being on the good side of her indignation. Fenris will remember the ferocity with fondness; it is so rare that the witch gets riled on his behalf, and even more-so riled on his behalf to this point.

He thinks that if he were to touch her, she might accidentally give him a shock, spitting lightning and sparks every which way.

The thought is vile, and it warms him from the inside out all the same.

Strange, how things change.

The child is sitting in his breakfast chair, smiling exactly as the witch does, wide and guileless, and is choosing not to make a sound. This is, somehow, entirely in character: he was always quiet when Fenris carried him through the world, ducking out of shadowed barns as the sun went down and avoiding whatever settlements they could. And so perhaps it is something ingrained, now, for the child to take stock of his surroundings before he draws attention to himself.

But perhaps not. He is still only a babe.

"You could not have cried for the witch, hm?" Fenris murmurs. "It would have made this simpler by far."

Iseth gums happily on the small wooden spoon that the witch had scrounged for him, blowing a bubble softly enough that it would not disturb a Chantry silence.

Fenris is not surprised that the child does not oblige him.

"You are going to be a menace when you are older," Fenris informs him. "Hawke would be proud, but the witch will be upset when she finds out."

Iseth giggles, stuffs his spoon back into his mouth, and chews cheerfully.

Fenris sighs heavily, and plucks him from his chair.

"Aveline," he says, over the din of the witch retorting hotly and Varric snickering and Donnic blinking in the doorway, "You may see for yourself. He is _fine_."

"I trust you about as far as I can toss the dwarf," Aveline says, without inflection. "Give that baby here."

"Hey," says Varric. "C'mon now, that's pretty far."

Fenris silently, but fervently, agrees.

Aveline only rolls her eyes, and pays the dwarf little heed, short-tempered as she ever is. She misses Hawke, too—it is hard not to, when her leaving had gouged out such a hole. Fenris glances at the witch, at the way she has shrunk into herself, and thinks he might be sick to his stomach.

He is not so well-pleased with how _unfair_ this feels.

But Aveline will not be persuaded. She gestures once for the hand-over, and that is all.

Fenris is not, however, expecting the way absolutely everything about her softens at the sight of the child in his arms. The Captain of Kirkwall's guard draws near, but not near enough to touch: her braid has come loose, and she squints at Fenris, and then at the child, and then turns to stare mildly at Varric. "You really weren't lying, were you."

"Look, I only lie when it matters," Varric says, with a sigh that, on someone else, would indicate great consternation. On Varric, it comes across only as exhausted. "C'mon, Aveline, the kid's clearly happy, Daisy's happy, and Broody's not nearly so broody! Win-win!"

Oh, yes, Varric is going to be _intolerable_.

Fenris hates owing the dwarf anything, but he will owe him for this. The witch need not pay the price, not when Fenris himself is already paying it.

The child is so small and laughing in Fenris' arms, and the witch is quiet and wide-eyed on the other side of the room. It sits heavy as lead at the bottom of his stomach, awful and undigested.

She does not deserve this indignity, either.

Iseth is the witch's, too.

And this thought will stay with him for the rest of the day. Through Donnic finally making his way through the door to coo at the child and Varric—correctly—assuming that Fenris and the witch share a bed and Aveline sighing despondently at the lack of baby things about, it stays. Through the witch twisting her sleep-shift into knots, through the washing up, through the child demanding attention, it stays whether Fenris wants it to or not.

The child is his, yes.

But the child is hers, too.

—

"Blame my husband," Aveline had said, neutrally, three days later when Fenris had found her dragging what looked to be a _bassinet_ through the door. "It was his idea."

Fenris does not doubt this.

It had not occurred to him, to seek a separate bed for the child. He slept fine as he was, oft between them, or tucked into the witch's chest, or beneath Fenris' arm, or—

He had not even thought of it.

But now that the thought—and the bassinet—is there, it is impossible to be rid of. The witch hovers at his elbow, staring down at the child tucked beneath the thin blanket embroidered along the edges in pale yellow. The last of the sunset in through the hole in the roof sinks around them velvet, soft as eiderdown, shimmering with purpling twilight already.

"He looks even smaller than normal, doesn't he?" she says, tipping her head back and forth like a bird. "Very odd."

Fenris glances at her. She is all— _gentle_ , all _soft_ , a funny little smile tugging up the corner of her lips. There is something very young about it, but Fenris knows that the witch is no kind of innocent.

She still has her scars, and he has not forgotten Audacity.

But the witch he'd known two years ago is difficult to reconcile with the witch smiling faintly at his side. They wear the same face, but that is as far as the resemblance goes. The witch sleeps curled on her side around the child, against his chest, makes barely a sound, and her wrists are never bandaged. The smell of blood rust and hand-wringing guilt is gone.

The witch is simply herself, and she should not look so sad.

"I don't know how I'll be able t'sleep without him," she muses, when he doesn't answer her. "It feels like I haven't slept alone in months."

Fenris had not considered this particular development. The child is no longer sleeping in the witch's bed.

And so there is no reason that he, himself, ought to be doing so, either.

(His spine protests even the mere thought of going back to sleeping upright. Fenris thinks that he might be getting old. He closes the lid on this possibility rather quicker than he would like to admit.)

"You will be fine, witch," Fenris says, quietly, instead of dwelling. He has slept in worse places. He will sleep in worse places, again. He has not become so soft.

"Oh, o'course! I still have you t'sleep with, don't I?"

"…Pardon?"

The witch wrinkles her nose. "It'll be colder than I'm used to, but Aveline left an extra blanket 'round here somewhere, we haven't piled _all_ of them on Iseth, it'll be _fine_ —"

"I did not—you do not mind?"

"Mind what?"

"Sharing your bed."

She blinks at him, as though an alternative to their arrangement had not even crossed her mind. "No? Where else would y'sleep, if not my bed? Y'can't mean going back t'sleeping in the chair, can you?"

"I have slept in worse places, witch," Fenris says, putting thought to voice, carefully level.

"Creators, Fenris, _no_! That's ridiculous!" the witch whispers at him, aghast. "You're going t'come to bed, don't be silly!"

Fenris does not audibly exhale his relief, but it is a close thing. It is nothing to allow the witch to tug him backwards, away from the bassinet in the corner, all the way to her bed. It is not so far; only a few steps, but it feels like leagues. He will still be able to hear the child breathing. And yet—

A deep exhaustion settles into his chest, some foul and formless thing that he does not have a name for. It eats at the backs of his eyes. He must make a sound, or something else besides, because the witch notices. She ceases her gentle herding, and cocks her head at him.

"Fenris?" she says.

He can barely raise his head to look at her.

The witch tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. Smiles. "It's going t'be alright."

"Did I say that it would not?"

"No," she says, without artifice, shrugging a single shoulder up and down like a bird. "But I think you're worried about it. Am I wrong?"

Fenris tries to scowl at her, and finds that he doesn't have it in him.

The witch nudges him very carefully with her hip. "You'll feel better in the morning. That's always the way it works!"

"Locks, witch," Fenris says darkly, more as a reminder to himself than to her. "And we are not giving Varric a key. I do not need to give that dwarf more ammunition."

"More ammunition? For what?"

Fenris groans, and collapses on the bed. "Never mind, witch. We are not giving him a key. That is final."

"But what if I lose mine? Y'know how I am, I'm bound t'lose it at least once. Who'll let me in, if not Varric?"

"I will," Fenris says.

"And what if you're not there?"

" _Merrill_."

She has the gall to laugh at him, as she slides beneath the blankets. "I like it, did y'know? When y'say my name. Y'don't do it very often!"

"Does it bother you that I do not?"

The witch thinks about this for a long moment, and Fenris studies her, watches the way she works it through. The candlelight flickers across her skin.

"No, I don't think so," she says, at last. "It used to, but not so much, now?"

"Why not?"

"Because y'don't use it t'be cruel, anymore."

Fenris inhales sharply. "Witch, I— _Merrill_ —"

She shakes her head against the pillow, the laughter turned quiet, spilling into the tiny cracked teacup of a smile she's wearing, all silver and soft as new leaves. He never knows what to do with her, and this makes it so _hard_ to give her what she needs.

Fenris had not ever thought he would _want_ to give her the things that she needs, and this is a confession, too.

"It's fine," the witch says. "I mean it."

"I wish you did not," Fenris says, and still does not know what he's trying to say. He would like her to care more for herself. He would like not to have to care about her at all. He closes his eyes, and tries to think of something else.

To sleep would be a mercy.

But there is no mercy, here.

"Tell me a secret," murmurs the witch.

Fenris opens one eye to survey her through the gloom. Her voice is almost more wind than sound, a bare half-breath above a whisper; she stares at him with wide eyes like lamps, unblinking, clear and green as sea-glass underwater.

"What sort of secret, witch?"

"Oh," she says, frowns a little. "I s'pose I hadn't thought that far. Maybe a secret that no one else knows?"

"Hawke is in love with Isabela."

"That's not a secret, Fenris, everyone knows that," she says, very patiently. "I think puppies and the ocean and even Orlesians probably know that Hawke loves Isabela? It's not as though she tries t'hide it."

Fenris snorts quietly.

This is true. Of all things, this is true. Hawke is many things, but subtle she is not.

"You tell me a secret first, witch," Fenris says, slowly, testing out the words. "No secrets come to mind."

"The rules have t'be the same, don't they? Something that no one else knows?"

Fenris grunts his affirmation.

The witch is quiet for a very long time. So long, in fact, that Fenris thinks that she may have fallen asleep, and he is hopefully free from the obligation of finding a secret for her that she does not already know, and one that will not hurt them both.

"I don't think I'd like t'sleep alone, if I had t'do it again," the witch says, so softly that he almost misses it. "I think I'd be scared t'try it. And wouldn't it be very cold?"

Fenris thinks he may have swallowed his tongue. He'd thought her earlier objection to his sleeping elsewhere had been by rote, but now he thinks—perhaps not. She sounds so _small_ in the darkness.

Worse, she sounds so very far away.

And for a moment, something sticks in Fenris' throat. He does not move, lest the sharp and shadowed prickle in his fingers morph into something more dangerous, like touch.

"That is a strange confession, witch. I do not think it a secret."

"I couldn't think of anything else that no one knows," she says, a despondent little slip of laughter in the words. "Maybe that's the secret, itself?"

They listen to one another breathe.

There is a secret behind Fenris' teeth. It is not a secret he had ever thought to tell anyone, least of all the witch herself, for it concerns her. He cannot bare to look at her with it so leaden on his tongue.

She waits in the quiet for too long.

"Y'don't have to," she says, and the kindness of it shreds what little of a soul he has left. "Not if y'don't want."

"I am trying to find the words," Fenris says. And this is true; there is difficulty in it. Like reading, it is something he has struggled for, and is struggling still. The witch's easy candor does not suit him, Fenris is aware. "It is not—I do not think it is a very good secret."

"Mine wasn't very good either, y'know."

"I do not hate you," Fenris says.

"Erm, I don't—am I s'posed t'say something? I'm glad y'don't, it'd be very strange of you t'be in my bed if y'did, but—"

"That is the secret, witch," Fenris cuts her off, very gently. "I do not hate you. I never did."

" _Oh_ ," exhales the witch. She blinks at him with her hand curled by her mouth. Fenris turns his face, and they stare at one another in the slick of moonlight through the shutters. There is only curiosity in her expression, and none of the casual cruelty he had expected. Deserved, even.

The witch simply looks at him. Her mouth softens, a little. "I promise I won't tell anyone."

"Tell anyone _what_ , witch?"

She smiles, slow and sleepy and for a moment, Fenris can't breathe for the sight of it. "That you're sweet, deep-down. I promise I won't tell. Not even Isabela!"

"And why not?"

"Because I think I want t'keep it a secret," she smiles at him, still. "One that's just for me."

The silence between them, then, slides into something resembling comfort. The witch tucks herself in a little closer. Her eyes are closed, and her breath evens. A lock of hair falls loose over her forehead, and there is a trembling inside of him that he cannot name.

Under the cover of the dark, holding his breath, Fenris allows himself to count her freckles.

—

.

.

.

.

.

 _tbc_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Viri sánguinum inferno, puer, et posuit illud dicula auxilium mihi_ —" translates-ish because my Latin conjugation is bad lmao to "Bloody hell, child, put that spoon down or so help me—"


End file.
